I thought I was dreaming. When my eyes opened, the first noise I registered was the rain striking the roof of my house. I didn’t think anything of it. It had been raining a lot recently. I looked over at the window. The rain was splashing against the glass and it was still dark outside. Alright, well, I was going back to sleep. Maybe the rain had woken me up.

But then I heard it – a knocking on my front door. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I waited to hear it again. Perhaps it had been a tree branch or something falling against the house.

The knocking noise happened again. It sounded exactly like someone knocking on my front door. Who would be doing that in the middle of the night during a storm? Slowly, I crept out of bed. I leaned over and grabbed my sword – just in case. With everything I had been through, I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

I crept down the hallway and into the living room. After the adventures with Chloe and discovering the truth of Charlie the Creeper King, I had moved to a larger village. Isolating myself just because I was a creeper (I can mingle with others because I am not a regular creeper. I don’t explode, I can speak and I have short arms) didn’t seem like something I wanted any longer. Sally, Rowley, Danny and my parents had all approved. They wanted the best for me, after all, even if that meant moving away from them.

There was a boom of thunder but the knocking didn’t stop. In fact, it grew more urgent. Gripping my sword, I went over to the front door and yanked it open. I held my sword out in front of me –

And found myself staring into my own face.

I made a noise of surprise and took a step backwards. Okay, now I knew it had to be a dream. There was no way that I could be knocking on my own door as well as standing here and holding a sword. The dream felt incredibly real – but didn’t all dreams?

“Put down the sword!” The other me exclaimed, “I don’t have much time!”

“W-what?” I replied dumbly.

The other me reached out for my sword and yanked it out of my hands. I allowed him mostly because I was too stunned to even react.

“You have to listen to me, Carl, okay?”

“This has to be a dream.” I mumbled.

The other me looked frustrated. He reached out and pinched me on my arm. I yelped in surprise at the sudden burst of pain.

“It isn’t a dream! You can feel pain! Enough of this – you have to listen to me!”

I had felt pain. I had been pinched hard and it still stung. In shock, I looked down at my arm.

But the other me wasn’t waiting for me to accept what was going on because he began to talk, “You have to stop them! Before it is too late! I’ve come back as early as I can to warn you but it might not be early enough! Are you listening?”

“Yes…” I mumbled, trying to follow what was going on.

The other me grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me a little, “Carl, the End Guardians have been weakened. Possibly destroyed! You have to make sure to get the crystals before he does!”

“The what? End Guardians? Who is coming for crystals?” I tried to follow what the other me was saying but none of it made any sense.

Something was happening to the other version of me – I was fading. I could no longer feel his hands on mine. His voice was growing softer as well.

“You need to stop them! Before the entire timeline changes!” The other me was shouting now but my voice was growing softer with each word.

“Wait!” I exclaimed, “You can’t go! Tell me what this is!”

“Carl, the End Guardians!”

Then the other version of me was gone. I stood there, in shock, trying to understand what had just happened. Slowly, I shut the door and looked at my sword on the floor. Then, I marched to my journal almost automatically.

Now, here I am, writing in this thing to try to make sense of what happened. I wouldn’t have been able to feel pain if it had been a simple dream. No, that had really been me coming from the future to warn me.

But what are End Guardians? My future me talked about timelines and was warning me about crystals. None of that makes any sense to me. I’ve never heard of anything like that. I’ve been to the End twice now. I’ve seen Ender Men. Could I have meant that? But no, I feel that I would have said Ender Men, not End Guardians.

Great, I’m never going to fall back asleep. I think in the morning I’m going to head to the library and see if I can find anything out.

Day 2

In the morning, the village was rain soaked. The cobblestone pathways were flooded and puddles were everywhere. No one ran up to me to tell me that they had seen me the night before. It seemed as if I had time traveled; however, I had only visited myself.

The library opened at nine and I was there right on time. I was the only one in there and the place was quiet. I came here a lot to unwind and read. I had never thought I’d come here to start looking up information about how I could time travel and about End Guardians.

I spent the morning going through every book possible about the End. I tried for hours to find some sort of mention about the End Guardians. But there was nothing. It was as if they didn’t exist at all.

That wasn’t new to me. No books in the library had contained information about Charlie the Creeper King, after all. Chloe and I had worked that one out ourselves and it had been incredibly dangerous. It appeared as if this was going to be yet another sort of legend I would have to find by myself.

By the afternoon, I was hungry and the storms had kicked back up again. I watched the rain fall outside the window, lost in thought. What was I missing? How could I find out more information about End Guardians?

I never got a chance to think it through because moments later there was a thunderclap so loud that it made my head hurt. The building shook around me. It was an earthquake!

Quickly, I went underneath the nearest table and hoped nothing would fall on me. The building was shaking viciously. I could hear panic from the rest of the villagers. We had never had an earthquake before. On top of that, the thunder seemed to happen faster and louder each time. The wind howled as if a hurricane was starting.

Were more people time traveling? I wondered if I was going to see my future self again. I heard one of the windows in the library shatter. The town alarms began to ring – bells on the watchtowers to tell everyone to get to safety.

I was unarmed. I had foolishly left my sword behind at my house. I had never needed it just wandering around the village before. The place I had moved to was small and quiet. I had liked it that way. After all the excitement that I had gone through, it was nice to live someplace serene. The thought to bring weapons with me to the library hadn’t even jumped into my head even after future me had visited.

I was regretting that choice now. With the way everything was shaking and the wind was howling, I wouldn’t be surprised if enemies poured into the village.

I heard something else then – a strange sort of humming noise. It filled my head and made it hard to think. I stuck my head out from underneath the table to try to see where it was coming from. To my amazement, in the middle of the library was a portal. One that I had seen before.

It was a portal to the End.

I backed underneath the table and popped out on the other side. Ender Men were coming out of the portal. I couldn’t believe that this was happening. Ender Men attacking this small village? I had never heard of something like this occurring!

The Ender Men seemed to be searching the area for something. They hadn’t seen me yet. Since I was the only one in the library, I didn’t have to worry about anyone else being seen. However, if this portal had opened here, it led me to believe that there had to be other portals opening around the village.

I ducked behind a shelf and peeked through. The Ender Men were yanking books off the shelf.